Halloween Tricks and Treats: Creepy, Scary, and ‘Mostly Dead’ Robots

As tiny ghosts and goblins prepare to invade neighborhoods in search of sugary sweets, we’ve decided to give you a few tricks and treats of our own. The editors of Robotics Business Review have compiled a list of Halloween-themed robot items that should scare, inform, educate, or even provide a few delightful moments in your otherwise dreary existence.

We’re now back in charge, with a quick reminder: While we may poke some fun here, we are generally optimistic about robots, robotics companies, startups, and even the machines that creep us out.

Halloween 2018 robot graveyard

Regular readers of RBR know that this year has not been kind to some robotics and drone companies, with several high-profile firms shutting their doors.

Sawyer and Baxter were cobots from Rethink Robotics.

Rethink Robotics’ Baxter and Sawyer

Founded in 2008, Rethink Robotics helped lead the revolution of collaborative robots that can work alongside humans more safely than their larger, industrial robot cousins. After raising almost $150 million in funding for a $291 million valuation, the Boston-based cobot maker quickly got competition from companies such as Universal Robots, as well as cobots from ABB, FANUC, KUKA, and others.

Mayfield Robotics’ Kuri

Mayfield Robotics’ Kuri is no more.

Launched in 2015, Mayfield Robotics was developing Kuri, a consumer home robot with personality and features that included voice commands, answering back with light shows, and animated facial expressions.

Born out of the Bosch Startup Platform, the company attempted to look for ways to achieve scale and advance the technology. However, in July 2018, the company announced it would suspend operations, as “there was not a business fit within Bosch to support and scale our business.”

In August, Mayfield said it would “cease all operations by October 31st, 2018,” and Halloween is a good a date as any to end a company and a robot.

Airware

Founded in 2011, Airware was one of the early leaders in the drone analytics space. It planned to provide a cloud software system that would help construction companies, mining operations, and insurance firms to analyze aerial data. Commercial drones are an alternative to expensive helicopters or putting humans in harm’s way.

Update: French drone services company Delair announced Oct. 30 it acquired the key assets of Airware in order to ensure the continuity of service for existing customers and dealers.

As much of the drone industry has pivoted from the consumer market to commercial uses such as infrastructure inspection, there were bound to be casualties (see also below). Lily Robotics filed for bankruptcy last year, and in December, the assets of drone company Prioria Robotics were seized in a contract dispute with Condor Aerial.

iDAvatars

Intelligent Digital Avatars Inc., a.k.a. iDAvatars, said in January that it would cease operations. The Minnesota-based company was working on the “Sophie” and “Holly” virtual assistants for the healthcare industry, but it lost Blue Cross Blue Shield as a client.

Not dead yet – or ‘mostly dead’?

While not technically dead in the sense of the company being gone, there are still several that faced uncertain futures, including:

3D printing company New Matter shut down in February, but Robo 3D is continuing to support its MOD-t printers.

Scary, creepy robots that might freak you out

Moving on from the graveyard, we now present the “scary” portion of Halloween – creepy robots. We see lots of robots, robotic concepts, and other things that freak us out on a regular basis. Presented here are a few robots that attempt to be humanoid or human-like, but come across rather frightening and/or creepy:

We start with the iCub, a humanoid robot developed at the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT), and currently being adopted by more than 20 laboratories worldwide. The robot includes 53 moters that move its head, arms, hands, waist, and legs.

In this video, researchers use VR with a human to tele-operate a humanoid like robot, who can then walk and interact with other humans in another location. But as seen in the video below, the robot’s child-like face and slow movements just come off as a little frightening:

The fact that iCub doesn’t have a mouth is also very horror-movie-like.

Why is this finger crawling toward me?

A few weeks ago, the Internet freaked out when it saw news of a French researcher who had developed a robotic finger that attaches to a smartphone and can crawl towards its owner. The MobiLimb project is a “shape-changing component with a compact form factor that can be deployed on mobile devices.”

Why are humanoid robots creepy?

In this cool Voice of America article, researchers explain why robots that look like humans make people uneasy. Whether it’s hardwired into our biology or if it’s challenging our notion of what it’s like to be a human, people are freaking out. This video explains more:

Don’t forget your robot costume!

OK, so we’re nearing the end of this roundup, and you’ve suddenly realized that you don’t have a costume yet for Halloween. There’s nothing easier to make than a robot costume, as evidenced by the ideas generated by Google:

Keith Shaw is the Editor for Robotics Business Review. Prior to joining EH Publishing, he worked as an editor for Network World, Computerworld and various newspapers across Massachusetts, New York, and Florida. He holds a degree in journalism from Syracuse University.